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The Commoner.
VOLUME 12, NUMBER 10
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The Commoner.
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THE COMMONER, Lincoln, Nob.
President Taft seems to have confessed judg
ment but some of his friends act as if he were
execution proof.
President Taft has the gout. Which means
that the g. o. p. is suffering from inflammation
at both extremeties.
Somehow or other Senator Penrose's "revela
tions" reminds us of the man who amputated
his own nose in order to wreak vengeance upon
his face.
It may be some consolation to Mr. Taft to
know that, in one respect, his record is with
out parallel. He came in with a majority of
one million and goes out by unanimous consent.
ArclJLbald Covering Gunter's famous novel,
Mr. Barnes of New York,"- isn't a bit more
interesting than Collier's historical sketch of
Mr Barnes of New York, and especially of
Albany.
A California democrat is responsible for the
statement that the bull moose movement has,
upon analysis, been found to be one per cent
moose and ninety-nine per cent plain old
fashioned bull.
TAINTED MONEY
Senator Penrose, rising in the senate, pas
sionately denies that the $25,000 received from
Archbold was in the nature of payment for his
work on the Standard Oil investigating commis
sion, and insists that it was his share of the
Standard Oil campaign contribution of $125,000.
Mr. Roosevelt, in another statement, declares
that tho Standard Oil tried to give $100,000
to the republican campaign committee, but that
he, personally, ordered the money returned.
The New York World, in commenting upon this,
caustically remarks that there are some con
spicuous corporation contributions that were not
returned, and mentions these:
The Perkins $48,702.50, which Chief Judge
Cullen said involved larcency from tho New
York Life; and $50,000 each from two other
insurance companies.
The steel trust fund sworn to by Perkins and
Counsel Lindabury.
The Philadelphia fund raised by Mr. Stotcs
hury, a partner of "the Morgan interests that
are so friendly."
The beef trust fund boasted of by Armour.
Haxriman's $260,000 or as ex-Governor
Odoll remembers it, $240,000 raised with tho
understanding that Frank Black was to be sena
tor and Mr. Depow an ambassador, and that Har
riman was to bo consulted about railway recom
mendations. And yet it will be remembered that when
Parker, on October 29, 1904, declared that the
trusts were furnishing Roosevelt money, his as
sertion was mot by Mr. Roosevelt with the lie
direct. Denver News.
Labor and the Trusts
Without industrial liberty tho American
ideals of social and industrial justice are un
attainable. Wo fear that the new party plan of
legalizing industrial monopolies would unwit
tingly become the instrument of industrial servi
tude. America seeks for its workingmen
shorter hours, higher wages, and better working
conditions as the fruits of industrial democracy;
but the new party offers them as a substitute for
industrial democracy. It asks us to abandon
the American ideal of industrial liberty and to
establish the German practice of benevolent in
dustrial despotism to enthrone monopoly made
good by law.
The country was horrified recently by the dis
covery that the steel trust, which had paid
fabulous sums to promoters and stockholders,
worked many of its employes twelve hours a
day seven days in the week worked them, too,
at such low wages that, even if a man toiled
his twelve hours each of the 365 days in the
year, he could not earn enough to provide a
decent living for a small family. The doctrine
of legalized monopoly threatens to perpetuate
the cause which made such conditions possible
and which must breed similar evils in the
future. That cause is the huge, overweening
power of the great trusts, the inexhaustible
resources of organized capital, which enable it
to prevent the organization of labor and to
make the term ironmaster a reality. America
must breed only free men. It must develop
citizens. It can not develop citizens unless the
workingmen possess industrial liberty; and in
dustrial liberty for the workingman is impos
sible if the right to organize be denied. With
out tho right to organize, short hours, high
wages, and the best of working conditions,
whether introduced by legislation or by the wel
fare departments of great corporations, can do
no more than make slavery luxurious.
The great trusts have made the extermina
tion of organized labor from their-own works
the foundation stone of their administration.
Read this resolution, passed by tho steel trust
in 1901:
"That we are unalterably opposed to any ex
tension of union labor and advise subsidiary
companies to take firm positions when these
questions come up and say they are not going
to recognize it that is, any extension of unions
in mills where they do not now exist."
Here is a steel trust advertisement:
' Wanted Sixty-two 'house men, tinners,
catchers, and helpers to work in open shops;
Syrians, Poles, and Roumanians preferred
steady employment and good wages to men willl
ing to work; fare paid and no fees charged for
this work. Central Employment Bureau, 628
Pennsylvania avenue."
The result is that about eighty per cent of
the unskilled laborers in the steel and iron
business are foreigners of these classes. This
.ability of the great combinations of capital to
overcome combinations of workingmen is con
fidently relied upon by the advocates of trusts
as one of the savings of combination. Monta
gue in his "Trusts of Today," in explaining the
trusts' "Improved Position in Dealing with
Labor," says:
"By its preponderant influence in the busi
ness, the trust has an enormous advantage in
its dealings with combined labor. In 1899 dur
ing the smelters' strike in Colorado, the Ameri
can Smelting and Refining company closed the
mills in which the strikers had been employed
and transferred the work to its other mills
the effect was immediately to break the strike
The United States Steel corporation ihad simi ar
success in 1901 with the Amalgamated Assoc a
tion of Iron and Steel Workers. Had tho as
sociation been dealing with competing cmnlov
crs, each eager to keep his mills running and
to got orders which his recalcitrant rivals could
not accept, its demands would soon Jiavo been
granted." u
The success of the German steel trust appears
to bo due in part to this same ability to frustrate
the aspirations of the workingman, as shown by
the following passage quoted in President Van
Hise's "Concentration and Control"-
"Another advantage obtained by the members
from tho existence of the cartel ftruatt i 53
dealing with strikes and labor difficult
Whenever a strike threatens, tho concern "in
-transfer its quota to somo other mill wherA
there are no labor difficulties. PurtMrmore
the syndicate contract contains a provision r
leasing the mill from obligation to deliver"
goods whenever a strike is on. Such an nil
rangement would have been impossible under
the competitive system, and losses growinc out
of strikes would undoubtedly have been rnS
greater if tho syndicate had not existed."
The italics in these quotations are ours Thn
labor policy of the steel trust is not excep'tionil
The harvester trust, the beef trust, the smelter
trust, the tobacco trust, the sugar trust and
many others can all boast of their triumphs over
organized labor. Denial to labor of the right
to combine is a policy common to the great com
binations of capital; and against that policy
labor battles in vain. Its loosely banded, ill
provisioned forces, however valiant and self
sacrificing, are no match for the compact power
of the huge trusts with inexhaustible resources
of money and of brains. Too great inequality in
power is necessarily destructive of libertybe
it political or industrial. There is but one
choice. We must keep democracy, or we must
pass rapidly on to state socialism. Collier's
Weekly.
WHY HE IS FOR WILSON
Dean of tho Yale Law School (Tuft's Own Uni
versity) Gives His Reasons
By Henry Wade Rogers: I shall vote for
Woodrow Wilson for president for these
reasons: ,,
To punish the republican party s the repre
sentative of th'e mercenary interests that have
preyed upon tho people for a generation, and
to punish it for the sins of big business in part
nership with crooked politics.
Because the policies of the republican party
tend to make the rich richer and the poor
poorer. Those policies widen the gulf between
the rich and poor. The crying ne d today con
fronting all civilized states is to narrow the
too-wide gulf between those who are too rich
and those who are too poor. The republican
party in recent years, and after ccomplishing
the abolition of slavery, has shown a singular
indifference to the divine injunction to consider
the poor.
Because Woodrow Wilson possesses tho
energy, the ability, the courage, the indepen
dence, the respect for the constitute and laws
which are so necessary if one is to fill tho high
office of president of the tlnited States.
I believe that his personal qualities are such
that he will be more successful in getting things
done than Roosevelt or Taft, Roosevelt cer
tainly was not successful in getting his meas
ures through congress. He was too mandatory
'and belligerent. He was too abrupt and irritat
ing in his way of doing things.
Mr. Taft has been much more successful than
Roosevelt in dealing with congress, yet in the
most important of all matters before congress,
that of the tariff, he could not win congress to
revise the tariff downward according to his own
and his party's promise.
There is no office in which personality counts
for more than in the presidency, and Woodrow
Wilson has the right personality. I concede the
charm of Mr. Taft's personality. He has all the
charm McKinley had, and more. But a presi
dent needs 'to have, in addition to his charm,
great political and personal tact and a resolute
will and determined purpose.
Mr. Taft is a fine type of gentleman, and I
believe him the most misrepresented and least
understood man in our public life. But it is
not within his power to accomplish the reforms
which are so necessary to the welfare of the
American people at this timo.
THE LORD'S SDDE
"A tafiff that will enable American manufac
turers to pay our workingmen wages and so ar
ranged that tho workingmen will get those
wages." Beveridge.
Long Mr. Beveridge was a United States sena
tor. Long he declared the prohibitive tariff
which he helped to make was issued to give
workingmen high wages and that it did that
very thing. Now he admits that the policy with
which he has been identified so many years was
a fraud. Did he know he was one of the main
stays of a huge swindle? Or has he just found
out thafhe-was In the wrong?
In any event, we assure him, he is now really
fighting on the Lord's side. Milwaukee Journal.
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